Frabjous Times

Today in the mail came my hardcopy of Volume 1, Issue 2 which includes three of my contributions. How nice it is to have something to hold in my hands with pages to turn, so I can savor Denis Garrison's triple crown cinquain any place.

I like the cinquain and its variants, even though English is not the best language for purely syllabic verse (as opposed to accentual-syllabic metered verse like good old iambic pentameter) because of the imprecision in syllable lengths as heard. I'm happy when that sudden drop-off from the longish fourth line down to the two syllable fifth line coincides in some way with either an aural or a semantic way, or when it echoes line one, or (now and then) both. And a cinquain is just about the right length for a poem which one can compose in the car driving to work in about twenty minutes.